miércoles, 11 de julio de 2018

Why Trump has few friends in Europe

U.S.
President Donald Trump (R) waits with NATO Secretary General Jens
Stoltenberg (L) before they pose ahead of a working dinner at The Parc
du Cinquantenaire, Jubelpark Park in Brussels

For Europe’s leaders, it’s personal.

Whatever the warm words and backslapping for the U.S. president at NATO
Wednesday, for Europe’s chancellors, prime ministers and presidents
Donald Trump poses a clear and present danger to their job security.

In the world of politics, this — above all — is the one unforgivable sin.

According
to senior EU government officials and diplomats who spoke on condition
of anonymity ahead of Trump’s visit to the U.K. Thursday, the rot at the
heart of the Western Alliance is not the lack of “spark” between Trump
and Theresa May, nor even his apparently visceral loathing of Angela Merkel.

Boil it down and Trump represents everything his most important transatlantic allies have been forced to define themselves against, whether at home or in Europe at large.

“Fundamentally,
what unites May, Macron, Merkel and Trump?” asked one senior U.K. aide,
when asked what lies at the heart of the U.S. president’s up-and-down
relationships with his allies. “In one way or another they are all
defined by their relationship with populism.”

For
Emmanuel Macron, this can be a bonus. Like Trump, he is a political
alpha male who rose to power on a wave of anti-establishment fury.

It
was certainly all smiles in Brussels Wednesday. After the U.S.
president praised his French counterpart for his leadership and their
“tremendous” relationship, Macron began to speak in French to reporters.
This prompted Trump to laugh and say that he didn’t understand what Macron said, but “it sounded beautiful.”

But for May and Merkel, this defining reality of their relationship only causes strife.

For
both political leaders, their grip on power depends on their ability to
hold the line against the very same forces Trump has corralled in the
U.S. — and now aims to foment in Europe.

For the U.K. prime minister, the threat is immediate.

Trump’s
brand of insurgent, conservative populism is threatening to drag her
from office over Brexit — just as she welcomes him to the U.K for his
first official visit to the country.

In contrast, many of
Europe’s leaders — and Merkel and May in particular — embody all that
Trump abhors in politics: the centrist, technocratic caution of the
political elite he is trying to smash.

Whatever the niceties on
display between the leaders this week — or the ongoing strategic ties
that bind the U.S. to NATO, Western Europe and the U.K. — the bilateral
relationship cannot bypass this fundamental issue, according to those
close to Europe’s leaders. ‘I like him’

The problem was on
display in Brussels as Trump made small talk with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán while going out of his way to attack
Germany. After a brief chat with Turkey’s authoritarian president on the
sidelines of the summit, Trump mouthed: “I like him, I like him.”

For Germany — in contrast — there was vitriol.

“I
think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with
Russia, where you’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany
goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia,”
Trump said in his opening remarks at a NATO breakfast, which were
broadcast live on television.

Trump’s
remarks hit on a fundamental division in the EU, putting Merkel on the
back foot from the start and giving succor to her critics in Eastern and
Southern Europe, many of whom are supportive of Trump.

Paolo
Alli, president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, told POLITICO
Trump’s populism “risks strengthening political adversaries in many
countries” across Europe. “This is an element that worries some
leaders.”

U.S.
President Donald Trump (L) speaks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan ahead of the opening ceremony of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) summit, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, on July 11,
2018 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

“The politics of
announcements is what unifies Trump, [Vladimir] Putin and [Italy’s
Matteo] Salvini, who love to look very strong on social media and more
in general to answer to people’s guts,” said Alli.

Trump has
more support and goodwill the further east he goes, especially in the
Baltics and Poland, where the U.S. leads a battle group as part of
NATO’s enhanced forward presence, and where fears of Russian military
aggression run highest in Europe.

Asked if Lithuania is Trump’s
last friend in Europe, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė said:
“No, I think he has a lot more. He has a lot more.” ‘Very, very nice’ Boris

Trump
appeared to deploy similar tactics on the U.K. as he did on Germany
before departing for Europe Tuesday, going out of his way to praise
former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who resigned on Monday while
making a blistering attack on May’s leadership.

Johnson has called for a tougher line on Brussels and a closer working relationship with Trump.

Trump
described Johnson as “a friend of mine” who had been “very, very nice
to me” and suggested he could meet him in London. He also described the
U.K. as being “in somewhat turmoil.”

Trump has also repeatedly
hinted at his frustrations with May, insisting he would have been “much
harder” on the EU in Brexit negotiations and even advising May directly,
in a tweet, to concentrate on tackling Muslim extremism rather than
criticizing him after he retweeted videos from a far-right British group.

Trump
is also close to Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U.K.
Independence Party which for so long acted as an existential threat to
May’s Conservative Party by attacking it from the right in much the same
way the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now treating Merkel.

Heads
of state and government, including (from L to R, first row) NATO
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, U.S. President Donald Trump, British
Prime Minister Theresa May and Estonia’s Prime Minister Juri Ratas
attend the opening ceremony at the 2018 NATO Summit at NATO headquarters
on July 11, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium | Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

A
second senior Tory close to May said Trump’s relationship with the U.K.
is afflicted by the “dark idea of Britain” he has adopted, fueled by
conservative U.S. media reports depicting Britain as a left-wing,
multicultural hellhole ridden with crime and Islamic extremism. A vision
of Britain “being overrun by hordes of Muslims who want to kill
everybody,” in the words of the close ally of the prime minister. Non-diverse, non-urban

Andrew
Cooper, a Conservative pollster who worked closely with David Cameron
when he was U.K. prime minister, sees remarkable demographic
similarities between Americans who voted for Trump, Britons who voted
for Brexit and Germans who vote for the AfD.

“The same
demographic factors that, in combination, correlate with strong support
for Brexit in the U.K., also correlate with support for Trump in the
U.S. — and for [Marine] Le Pen in France and the AfD in Germany: low
level of educational attainment, low income, being white and living in a
very non-diverse non-urban area,” Cooper told POLITICO.

“These
voters share a common worldview — strongly nationalistic, opposed to
immigration and multiculturalism and culturally conservative on a range
of social issues.”

It is this group of U.K. voters — and the MPs
who support them in the House of Commons — who now threaten May at
home: Tories who voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, and who want tighter
controls on immigration and more sovereign control over trade (much like
Trump’s conservative base).

“As long as Russia persists in
its efforts to undermine our interests and values, we must continue to
deter and counter them” — British Prime Minister Theresa May

While
the U.K. prime minister has avoided much of the vitriol Trump has aimed
at Germany and Merkel, she nevertheless represents the same tradition
of social Christian conservatism as the German chancellor. May’s
worldview is also much closer to Merkel and Macron than Trump.

“Just
look at the G7,” one aide close to May said. “Who was the strongest
supporter for the German chancellor and French president? The British
prime minister.”

While May will support the U.S. president’s
call for greater “burden-sharing” at NATO, his threat to the
organization risks ripping away the central pillar of Britain’s security
since World War II.

At a NATO dinner Wednesday, May went out of
her way to avoid confrontation with Trump, welcoming his coming
Helsinki summit with Putin as “a means of reducing the risk of a
confrontation” with Russia.

However, the U.K. leader warned
Trump and the other NATO leaders that Russia is attempting to “undermine
our democracies and damage our interests around the world.” She called
on NATO to do more to punish rogue Russian actions, highlighting the
Salisbury chemical attack, in order to “raise the cost of malign
behaviour whenever it occurs.”

“As long as Russia persists in
its efforts to undermine our interests and values, we must continue to
deter and counter them,” she said.

Trump had warm words for the
U.K. ahead of his visit, saying there is “no stronger alliance than that
of our special relationship … and there will be no alliance more
important in the years ahead.”